Person:James Silvers (1)

James Silver Sr., 'Indian Trader'

• Page 5 - Silver Spring Township - Bicentennial - American Heritage In Your Own Back Yard - Presented by the Silver Spring Township Bicentennial Committee 1976

In 1749, James Silver and William Magaw petitioned the provincial council for the erection of Cumberland County. Silver and Magaw presented to the council the difficulties in being so far from Lancaster, where the courts and public offices were.

Records in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

• SILVER SPRING TAVERN - Oliver Pollock Tavern - Location - 6395 Carlisle Pike - Tavern - Standing - 2-story stone - :Built 1797 - Tavernkeepers were John McCurdy 1771-1776, David Briggs 1796-1804.

History - The original tavern burned in November 1796. The new tavern 40’ by 33’ was built by Oliver Pollock before 1798.

• Robert Callender, the original landowner on which Silver Spring Tavern is built, died in 1776. The executors wrote in the Pennsylvania Gazette dated 2 Oct 1776,

"TO BE SOLD - 1,200 acres of excellent limestone land situated in East Pennsborough Twp. on great road leading from Harris Ferry to said town of Carlisle whereon are erected and built an excellent merchant mill and sawmill adjacent... now in tenure of Mr. Francis Silver, on a never failing stream of water known by name of Silver Spring. Oliver Pollock purchased the property.

Reverend Manasseh Cutler traveling to the Northwest Territory stopped at the tavern. He was the founder of Marietta, Ohio. He says "We went 7 miles from the Susquehanna River to Pollock’s Tavern. A fat Irishman gave us a grand dinner, but one horse fared badly; intolerably dear."

During David Brigg’s tenure as tavernkeeper, a disastrous fire occurred. It was reported in the 11 Nov 1796 edition of Klines - "CONFLAGRATION - the Silver Spring Tavern, property of Oliver Pollock, Esq., which was kept by Mr. Briggs, took fire and was consumed. Charles Smith, Esq., one of the lodgers and in adjoining room went where several Indian chiefs lodged who joined him in the cry to the other lodgers."

• Note - Francis Silver married Jannet Sample the daughter of John Sample of East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Samuel Semple Sr., was an uncle to Jannet Sample who married Francis Silver, and a brother of John Sample of East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland, Pennsylvania.

SAMPLE, Samuel on the 01 Aug 1766 applied for 300 acres of land on the Little Juniata, adjoining land applied for by Joseph Silver of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Francis Silver applied for the land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on Apr 1, 1766.

Samuel Semple Sr., also operated a Tavern in Carlisle, before he and his son Samuel Semple Jr., began operating the Tavern at Fort Pitt.

• Discussions of speculator James Silvers' land purchases in now-Cumberland County c.1735 dismiss warrants to Joseph Silver as a "straw man," that is, Joseph was not a brother but a front for additional warranting by James himself. But it should be noted that one of the George Brandons, possibly this Joseph Silver's father-in-law, was at a vendue in the Silver's Spring area in 1739 and that Presbyterians from York County travelled to Silver's Spring for church until the Monaghan congregation at Dillsburg was given the go-ahead in 1760.

• Schaumann, Merri Lou Scribner. Taverns of Cumberland County Pennsylvania 1750-1840. (Lewisberry, Pennsylvania: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1994).^S20

Samuel Semple Jr. also operated a Tavern in Carlisle, before operating the Tavern at Fort Pitt.^S20

• Newberry Library^S15

30 Dec 1772 Order to Pay Samuel Semple, Jr. - Order (Logstown, Pa., 1772 Dec. 30) instructing Robert Callender to pay Samuel Sample Jr. twenty pounds, and letter (Fort Pitt, 1781 Sep. 7) to an unknown addressee regarding the supply of provisions to Fort Pitt.^S15

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 James Silver, Sr, in Find A Grave.
2.   Silver Spring Township Bicentennial Commission 1976..

   Page 1 - Early History
   Page 5 - James Silver and William Magaw